Day three of the rideabout took us from the country to the heart of the big city of Sydney. When we left from Jon's home it was quite brisk, the seats of the bikes were covered in frost, the skies blue and cloud free. The fuel tank on the Ural holds five gallons, many of the places we were to travel over the next three weeks were more then five gallons apart so carrying and using a spare gas can was an inescapable task.

We rode around and over another small mountain range called the Nowindoc Range, again not much traffic but many very steep grades. In the USA most of the major roads and all of the freeways have grades of 7% at a maximum this was done as anything over a 7% grade was determined by the military to be unsuitable for military transport, there is also a minimum curve radius but I forget what it is, in Oz I noticed that many of the grades that were marked were in excess of 10% many at 12% and 14% this made for very slow riding when coming up on or trying to pass some of the large trucks.

About 150k from Sydney we meet up and had lunch with a local Ural rider his screen name is "roscoau" he rides a green Patrol and is standing to the left of Jock in this photo.

This was the first time I had eaten an Australian burger with the "works", the works is a pile of lettuce, some onion, tomato, some kinda sauce, topped off with a fried egg and beets. First time I had ever had a burger with egg and beets on it. I learned to oder the burgers without the beets, they were a bit to much for my taste.

roscoau, rode with us for a while through some nice country rolling hills criss-crossed by many small streams, he lead us to the motorway which would take us to Sydney and then pulled off and headed back to his home. Thank you roscoau, it was a pleasure to meet, eat and ride with you.
Here we are gassing up the bikes just before roscoau, lead us to the motorway.

Riding the Ural with the sidecar on the left, on the left hand side of the road in the country was not that big of a deal; doing so in heavy traffic at motorway speeds trying to keep Jock in sight in an area I had never been in before was down right nerve racking at times. It was getting dark when we got into Sydney, we found the shop where would spend some time the next day as I was to be interviewed by a local bike magazine reporter, Roland the owner of the shop stayed late to let us park our bikes in the shop and then took us out to dinner before setting us up for the night in his home.

Somehow I lost all of the photos I took that evening, I took many of the shop and the bikes that were for sale, some of the project bikes in the garage and of the neat BMW sidecar rig in the basement. Roland to us to a Thi restaurant, a very nice restaurant, Roland must be a regular as we were picked from the line waiting for a table and shown to our places well before those who were in line ahead of us. I am NOT much of a fancy food person, just a meat and potatoes man. The food we ate that evening was really good but I dare say I don't have a clue what most of it was, the way it was served much of it wrapped in leaves was all new to me and quite enjoyable.

Roland kept an apartment in Sydney that he lived in during the week as his regular home was a quite a drive from the shop, again I have no photos of this neat place. We spent the night in Roland's apartment before heading to his shop the next morning.

Day four of the rideabout, started by me working on the Ural at Roland's shop as we waited for the reporter to show up. There were somethings about the setup on the Ural that I wanted to change to make it more suited to my personal riding style. I reset the lean-out of the bike, leaning the bike toward the sidecar at about 1 degree rather then the 3 degrees it was set at, I removed and re-positioned the rear brake lever so it would provide stronger braking action, and re-positioned the reverse lever to make shifting into and out of reverse with your heel much easier.

While I worked on the Ural, Roland on the left talked to Jock about our trip.

Here's a photo of me and the Ural I was riding in front of Roland's shop along with a couple of the Ural's he had for sale.

Th entire staff at Roland's shop, we took this photo after the interview and before we left in the early afternoon.

I am going to post this part of the ride report and then EDIT this post to show a good photo of the front of Roland's shop, as I have forgotten what he calls it. I am going to email Roland and ask him to email me a photo for this ride report. He took great care of us and his shop deserves recognition for the services he provided. Stay tuned.